Part 14 (2/2)
”Shooting pains?”
Trout nodded. ”What am I to do? I cannot think as they have dentists in these parts.”
Florence bent over, pausing for a.s.sent before she gently pressed her hand on Trout's forehead. The skin was cool and damp. Trout's body gave way under her touch, like a brick wall suddenly crumbling into a heap.
”Thank you,” Trout whispered. ”You are kind.” She adjusted her position in the bed.
”I'm sorry you are not feeling well.”
”I'm sorry I'm a bother to you. Egypt is doing me in.”
”It's all right. It's not your fault.” At last, Flo thought, Trout had decided to trust her. Flo felt so much better being kind than being strict with her.
Though Flo had never suffered a toothache, she'd watched WEN and f.a.n.n.y and Grandmother Sh.o.r.e endure them. She was certain Trout's was genuine and that she hadn't called it forth by dint of her hypochondriacal nerves. ”Will you let me help you?” she asked.
”Yes, mum. I'd be grateful. I can do nothing with this pain gnawing at me.”
”I shall try my best to cure you, then,” Flo said. Her mind was churning, for when it came to ague and catarrhs, wens, rashes, and simple fractures, she had experience. But of teeth, she knew nothing except what to do for any swelling or inflammation.
”Are you hungry?” she asked. ”Could you take some sopped bread or soup?”
”It don't seem right you serving me.”
”We cannot choose our illnesses.” Flo stepped away from Trout's bed. ”No more than we can choose our station in life. I shall be back shortly.”
Flo felt a sudden infusion of purposefulness, a welcome sensation. She went on deck and asked Charles for some whiskey, which he readily poured into a teacup. She instructed Paolo to prepare tepid broth with bread.
Back in the cabin, Trout lay flat on her back, her eyelids drooping, and the right side of her face puffy. Flo poured out a jigger of ”medicine” (Trout eschewed spirits), which Trout downed in one swallow. Tea would be good, too, Flo thought, the accompaniment at any sickbed. She went back upstairs and ordered a pot.
Trout was dozing when she returned. She decided not to awaken her. She opened her medical chest and removed cotton wool, swabs, bandage gauze, and a few vials. She began a log in her journal book: Trout, 7 A.M.: Swollen jaw, painful tooth. No apparent fever. Patient fully cognizant.
Efreet-Youssef poked his head into the cabin. He went barefoot on board the dahabiyah, and except for the pleasant slap of his feet when he worked on deck raising or lowering sails, she never heard him move about. ”Madami,” he whispered, shyly looking down as she turned to him. He held out his hand with a letter in it. Nodding in grat.i.tude, she took it. He disappeared as silently as if he had levitated upstairs. Flo glanced at Trout: still sleeping. She sat on the divan and ripped open the envelope.
My dear Rossignol, We returned to Philae three days late from Aswan, where we succeeded in securing supplies and diverting ourselves. Not knowing what would be available farther downstream, we also purchased (against Joseph's objections) a few provisions for the trip to Koseir.
The guidebook says it is a four-day walk from Kenneh to the Red Sea, but our mounts, not we, will be doing the walking. We will not, as I expected, be riding horses, but camels. (Can one sit a trotting dromedary? Do they trot? Do they gallop?) Apparently the road is poor, and water can be a problem, with dried-up and contaminated wells. (We saw a well near Edfu with the carca.s.s of a decomposing goat draped across its mouth. The stench would have given an archbishop second thoughts about the existence of G.o.d.) I have thought often of you in the past week, hoping that you are feeling happier and even enjoying yourself-and banis.h.i.+ng any extreme thoughts.
I wonder if you are as preoccupied with fantasies of the Red Sea as I am-writing in the clouds, my mother used to call my daydreaming. Max, on the other hand, is sharpening his nibs and pencils. Everything is fodder for his literary ambitions, which differ from mine. I do not think he lives in the present at all, but in some frantic future packed with ink bottles and reams of paper whereon he rehashes and thus brings to due importance the events which pa.s.s for ordinary life to the rest of us poor sods not inclined to publish the existence of every stray cat of a thought that crosses our minds. I shall have to cut out his tongue if he suggests one more time that I write a travel book, as if my life, too, were a poor rag to be soaked in the fluid of adventure, then squeezed out drop by drop onto the page as words. b.o.l.l.o.c.ks! I want to feel the desert sun drumming the back of my neck, count the armies of stars arrayed in the night sky. I want the hot Saharan air to parch my nose and lungs so that I may know the pleasure of quenching an immeasurable thirst. Sometimes I think Max undertakes things only so he can write about them afterward.
Twice I have promised to teach you to make a squeeze. It is now 6:30 A.M. and we are camped in tents among the palms on the eastern side of Philae. I shall come by at ten to make good on my word. I know this is very short notice and if you are otherwise occupied, we shall make a future date.
Wear your pretty pink bonnet.
Your friend,
Gve. Flaubert
P.S. Bring drinking water if you can manage it.
Flo read the letter twice, then tucked it in her desk. She decided she would go. And though there wasn't time for a reply, she couldn't resist looking in Murray, if only for a moment. She scanned the index: ”old Koseir” and then there, on page 398, ”Koseir”: ROUTE 27.
Kenneh to Koseir, by the Russafa Road.
Miles Kenneh to Beer Amber 113/4.
Wells of El Egayta 213/4.
Well of Hammamat 241/2.
Well called Moie-t (or Sayal-t) Hagee Soolayman
33.
Beer el Ingleez
15.
Ambagee 51/4.
Koseir
6.
Total miles: 1171/2.
<script>